Rating: 
- Excellent
Seldom does a product get a rave review
from me. But this sebo vacuum made me stop in my tracks .It is near
perfect in my book. I had been wanting a Miele
Silver Moon hepa vacuum cleaner for the longest of times but
had choked a bit at the price. The Silver Moon is still a beautiful
machine, but for those of you who like me want the quality and save
a few pennies at the same time, the new
sebo C3 powerhead canister vacuum cleaner priced at $939 may
be the answer.
I hate vacuum cleaning. From my perspective, vacuum
cleaners are designed and sold by people who clearly have never
had to vacuum in their lives. Every time I review and test a vacuum
cleaner, I shake my head at the features the engineers could have
incorporated and did not. So with my usual healthy dose of skepticism,
I took the Sebo C3 powerhead canister vacuum cleaner home to test.
I took me about 10 minutes to reach the conclusion, that someone
who was actually intelligent had engineered this vacuum cleaner.
It took another 10 minutes to decide that no way this vacuum was
going back to the office. This one was a keeper!
- First thing I noticed was I could immediately
assemble this vacuum cleaner without looking at the manual. Not
that in theory I have objections to manuals, but it was a pleasure
for this mechanically challenged human to figure it out without
calling for help.
- Next I noticed that the power head started immediately
as soon as I pressed the hinged lever on the floor to operate
the vacuum, and if I put the machine in the upright position it
automatically turned itself off. Cool, especially when my husband's
cell phone keeps ringing.
- The powerhead adjusted itself magically as I moved
from thick Chinese rug to a thin scatter rug. It was a bit noisier
than I was used to, but it was sucking up tons of dirt effortlessly
and the sebo vacuum seemed to be almost self- propelled.
- Next, I tried out the upholstery attachment on
a chair covered with cat hair. It was truly just a snap to change
from the powerhead to the hand tool, off and on was smooth and
fast. If the hand tools on a vacuum are not easy and fast to change,
I am never motivated to use them- they just stay neatly stacked
and unused inside the canister. Now, the fully electrified adjustable
wand came into its own. No peering into little sockets on the
vacuum cleaner to reconnect it after using the tools. As for the
cat hair, the upholstery tool did a surprisingly good job but
it took too long for Ms. Impatience here, so I put the optional
small turbo head on my shopping list.
- I have to confess that as a confirmed klutz, I
had some trouble putting the upholstery brush back inside the
sebo vacuum canister. Easy if you are good at jigsaw puzzles,
but my superior IQ was stumped for at least 5 minutes. I have
made a mental note to take a good look next time I take out a
hand tool as to where to put it back.
- Now someone at Sebo figured out that if you supply
a floor brush which cannot fit inside the canister, it might make
sense to put a little socket for it to hook on the back to the
unit when you are vacuuming, otherwise the floor brush gets left
behind in the closet - brownie points for that. At this time of
writing, I think I have at least 3 generations of floor brushes
at the back of my closet. The sebo vacuum floor brush has a nifty
design kind of teeth with every other one missing. My kitchen
floor was truly a challenge, after my husband had tramped in god
knows what with his sneakers from the ravine, where he had rescued
one of our cats one night last week. The floor brush did the best
job at cleaning up sneaker dirt I have ever encountered. By this
time, I was warming to the task and humming as I cleaned.
- I took a little break at this point and appreciated
that the power head did not tip over but just stayed nicely behaved
in the upright position. Electrical cord retracted smoothly and
did not whipsaw as in other vacuum cleaners, which are designed
to frighten the life out of you.
- When I resumed vacuuming I lifted the machine
upstairs. Again I smiled, a nice handle conveniently placed so
I did not feel I was lugging around an elephant. It was the not
the lightest of vacuums, but neither the heaviest.
- As I started up again, I noticed the sebo vacuum
cleaner seemed to have an unusually long electrical cord and I
did not have to pick and move the canister very often. Of course,
when I did move the canister, tugging at it to get it round a
corner, I was glad that someone was smart enough to give this
vacuum nice soft bumpers, so I wasn't beating up the paintwork.
- Somewhere along the line, I noticed that the handle
was small enough for my little hands and wasn't causing my arthritis
to kick up. I liked that most of the vacuum cleaner controls were
on the handle and the rest were operated by a swift depression
of the foot. It was a relief not to be bobbing up and down, bending
to get the suction just right. Now I would not be vacuuming the
blinds two feet off the windows by using too much suction.
- I decided to try opening the canister again to
use the dusting brush. The dusting brush in my opinion is great
for baseboards, chair rails and pictures and metal and wood blinds.
This nifty attachment is also great for vacuuming the bathroom
vanity lights, recessed spotlights, cobwebs on the ceiling and
the corners in my bathroom. This is when the retractable wand,
which just glided oh so smoothly and clicked into place without
a struggle. By now, I was getting positively joyful and then I
got angry at all those "other" vacuum cleaners. Millions
of us condemned to vacuum cleaner purgatory. I realized that this
vacuuming thing was almost pleasant, and my cleaning lady was
going to LOVE me the following week. Or maybe she wasn't, as I
was going to set new standard of cleanliness. No excuses, she
was going to have a crackerjack tool to use!
- Down two floors to the garden level where the three
cats hang out. There are plenty of challenges here. Noticed that
the floor brush at the back did NOT fall off coming down stairs,
which was appreciated. The sebo vacuum sucked up all that supposedly
low trackable cat litter, which was tramped out from the laundry
room all over the carpet.
I have discovered something about cleaning the house
with a good quality cleaning aid. It can be therapeutic and satisfying
if the job at the end is well done. But don't get me wrong, I still
prefer playing golf at weekends to vacuuming.
The complete sebo vacuum cleaner review by our product
engineers can be found at the links below. They gushed over the
Sebo's intelligent engineering and you can read what they have to
say. All I can say is I am keeping this one very firmly at home.
See the links below for the Sebo C3 and C2 models.
Sebo c3 vacuum model for mix of carpet and bare floors especially
if pets are around.
Sebo c2 vacuum model for bare floors and scatter rugs.
First Published: Memorial Day 2003
Updated: April 2007
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